New Light on the Portrait of Francis Williams

Last month Artnet and the Guardian reported on historian Fara Dabhoiwala’s findings about a painting I discussed in 2009.

The painting shows Francis Williams (1697–1762), a Jamaican of African ancestry. Born into a free and prospering family with special legal status, he went to London for education and then returned to the family estate.

The painting is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and fifteen years ago I quoted its webpage as saying:

Some writers have suggested that the painting is a caricature of Francis as he has been depicted with a large head and skinny legs. . . . Other critics have considered that the ‘unnaturalistic’ depiction may have been intended to emphasise the subject’s intellectual skills over his physical stature (Francis was alive at the time of the painting’s creation and may even have commissioned it). It may, more simply, be a reflection of the artist’s limited skills.

The new research connects the creation of the painting to a specific historical, and astronomical event.

The Guardian report explains:

Dabhoiwala…discovered the significance of the page number carefully inscribed on the book Williams is reading: it is the page in the third edition of Newton’s Principia that discusses how to calculate the trajectory of a comet by reference to the constellations around it.

An X-ray of the window scene depicted in the background of the painting showed lines intersecting what appears to be a luminous white comet, streaking through the sky at dusk, and connecting – with stunning accuracy – to constellations of stars. These stars would have been visible in that position in the firmament when Halley’s comet was in the sky over Jamaica in 1759, according to research by Dabhoiwala.

In other words, this picture shows a particular moment when Halley’s comet appeared over Williams’s estate, and it shows him as an educated gentleman who knew how to calculate the path of that comet.

Artnet adds:

As for the painting’s creator, Dabhoiwala is confident it’s the work of William Williams, an English-American artist who traveled to Jamaica in the 1760s. The comet together with the appearance [in the bookcase] of [Dr. Samuel] Johnson’s Dictionary, which was first published in 1755, align with this timing and the painting’s style is similar to other early Williams portraits of Benjamin Lay, a Quaker abolitionist, and Hendrick Theyanoguin, a Mohawk Indian.

The Lay portrait, now at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, also shows a man “with a large head and skinny legs.” Like Williams, Lay (c. 1681–1759) was notable for standing out in British-American society rather than fitting in. Williams (1727–1791) might have specialized in such subjects.

TOMORROw: More on William Williams’s work.